Family Habitus As The Cultural Context For Childhood

Childhood
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Family Habitus as the Cultural Context for Childhood

Smiljka Tomanovic
Childhood 2004 11: 339
DOI: 10.1177/0907568204044887
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FAMILY HABITUS AS THE CULTURAL
CONTEXT FOR CHILDHOOD
SMILJKA TOMANOVIĆ The article is based on a longitudinal qualitative

University of Belgrade
study carried out by the author on children and their
Key words families in two areas of Belgrade (Serbia) in
capital, children’s everyday life, cultural
contexts, family habitus, family 1993–4 and 2000. Its goal is to provide an insight
resources into how everyday life is structured and constructed
Mailing address: for children by their family habitus. There are
Smiljka Tomanović
Department of Sociology, Faculty of
significant distinctions in how families from
Philosophy, Čika Ljubina 18–20, 11000 different social strata use their resources and
Belgrade, Serbia.
[email: smiljkat@infosky.net] thereby provide different cultural contexts for
children. The main conclusion is that family habitus
Childhood Copyright © 2004
SAGE Publications. London, Thousand Oaks has a strong influence on allocation, distribution
and New Delhi, Vol 11(3): 339–360.
www.sagepublications.com and the use of family resources and thereby
10.1177/0907568204044887
structures the everyday life of children. At the same
time, it activates different kinds of capital for (and
by) children and thereby constructs different
childhood practices.
The long-term interest of my research has been the everyday life of children
in different types of families in Serbia. In this article, I intend to focus on
how everyday life is constructed and structured for children, rather than by
children: the perspective that has been recognized as one of the major
approaches in the sociology of childhood (James, 1998; James et al., 1998;
Qvortrup et al., 1994).1
In the study, childhood is conceptualized as practice: a set of actions
and relations in the everyday life of the child. The concept of practice has
been chosen for several reasons: it assumes the mutual interrelationship of
structure and agency (Bourdieu, 1990a; 1990b), and it stresses the dynamics
of the processes involved; and it situates everyday life as the context
(Tomanović, 1993; Tomanović-Mihajlović ,1997: 20).2 In my study, I focus
on everyday life in families as the primary ‘arena of action’ for the practices
of childhood (Hutchby and Moran-Ellis, 1998: 18), and as one of the basic
arenas of social reproduction (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990).
The purpose of this article is to try to give some insight into the way
family acts as the cultural context of childhood and on a wider level how
family habitus structures children’s everyday life. It starts with an overview
339

CHILDHOOD 11(3)
of the methodology and the major findings of my study, followed by a brief

description of the basic features of Serbian society under a period of trans-
formation. The next section deals with basic concepts and assumptions of
the research. Research findings are presented in two sections: one dealing
with families as organizational contexts, and the other dealing with family
resources. Some conclusions from the research are summarized in the last
section, where a theoretical model is also proposed for understanding the
relation between family habitus and children’s everyday life.
Background
The article is based on a longitudinal qualitative study of children in two
types of families (families of workers and families of professionals) in two
Belgrade communities.3 The study was done in two waves: the first was in
1993–4, when the children were preschool age (4–7 years), and the second
in 2000, when the children were between 11 and 14 years old.4 For the first
wave, I used non-representative purposive sampling for the interviews: the
criteria for choosing subjects from children’s records from local health cen-
tres were father’s (and preferably matching mother’s) occupation and that
they were two-parent families.
The details for each wave of the study are given in Table 1. During the
first wave of the study the sample consisted of 72 worker families and 21
professional/artist families, each with children aged from 4 to 7 years. I con-
ducted standardized interviews with parents at both sites and in-depth inter-
views with parents and children (in just 12 families: six girls and six boys, in
the industrial area only). The interviews were held in the families’ homes
and they covered different areas of the everyday life of the parents and chil-
dren. Each of the areas of family life was examined in relation to the child
Table 1 Description of the two waves of the study
Time Subjects Method Site and number of cases
1993–4 Families with Standardized Industrial area 100a Inner city 32

children 4–7 interviews
Case studies Industrial area 12
2000 Families with Case studies Industrial area 11 Inner city 10

children 11–14
Schoolchildren Survey Industrial area 75 Inner city 75
12–13 Housing estate 49
a
50 mothers and 50 fathers were interviewed in Rakovica (100 interviews in 72 families); and 16 moth-
ers and 16 fathers were interviewed in Vračar (32 interviews in 21 families).
340

TOMANOVIĆ: FAMILY HABITUS AS CULTURAL CONTEXT
and also from his or her perspective (through in-depth interviews). The
analysis was based on a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods
(Tomanović-Mihajlović, 1997).
In the spring of 2000, I began the second wave of research. The first
part comprised case studies, based on 42 interviews in 21 families: 11 work-
ers’ families in the industrial area and 10 professional families in the inner
city. The children were interviewed separately, and the parents jointly (when
possible). I chose the 11–14 age group for the children for this second wave,
since so-called ‘higher forms of primary school’ are considered to be a criti-
cal point in children’s cognitive and social competences.
Among the 21 children interviewed were 13 boys and 8 girls who were
studied as preschoolers in 1993 and 1994.5 Interviews were also conducted
with the children’s parents: 16 joint interviews with both parents, one with a
father (divorced), and four with mothers only (in one case the mother was
divorced).6
The second part, the survey, carried out in the autumn of 2000, was
developed through qualitative analysis of the interviews and aimed to test
some of the findings on family and children’s everyday life on a wider and
more representative population. The idea at that point was to broaden the
number of child participants in the project, and make the study population
more socially diverse, so that the findings would be more representative of
this generation of children. The survey sample consisted of 199 children
from five schools in Belgrade: two in the industrial area, two in the inner-
city area and one in a housing estate in a large Belgrade municipality with a
very heterogeneous population. The children, 107 boys and 92 girls, were in
the sixth and seventh forms of primary school, mostly 12 and 13 years old.
In both waves of the research, the analysis is based on a combination
of basic quantitative comparative analysis between samples with interpreta-
tion based on evidence from case studies. The findings provide the evidence
base for the data analysis drawn upon in this article.
The first wave was done in a very specific sociohistorical context in
1993–4: civil war had brought enormous devastation in human and material
terms to the country. In all domains – political, economic, institutional,
everyday – the social infrastructure was in a state of collapse with negative
consequences for people’s morale and a retreat into private life (Bolčić,
1995; Lazić et al., 1994; Tomanović-Mihajlović, 1997). In a situation of
enormous devastation, an inflation rate of thousands of billions of dinars a
year, an extremely high level of unemployment and a surplus workforce
(estimated to be almost 50% of the employed in the state sector), it would be
absurd to use terms such as ‘quality of life’. Many people were on enforced
paid leave from work (particularly from the industrial sector), which meant
women returning to the home, men moving into the grey economy market,
while children were taken out of their childcare institutions. For most fami-
lies in Serbia the quality of life means in practice developing ‘survival
341

CHILDHOOD 11(3)
strategies’.7 The ‘brutalization’ of everyday life, in terms of the struggle to

survive, is at the same time the consequence and the cause whereby most
families and individuals fall into the category of ‘losers’ (as opposed to
‘gainers’) from the social transformation (Milić, 1995). This situation has
had very negative repercussions on children’s lives. Children’s lives have
been endangered in many ways just as the realization of their rights has been
seriously limited in every domain (Tomanović-Mihajlović, 1997: 39ff.).
The second wave of the research was done a year after the armed con-
flict with NATO forces, but 6 months before the major political changes in
Yugoslavia. The economic situation was still very unstable and difficult.
Although some families in the study had developed more lasting coping
strategies, in particular converting skills and knowledge into economic capi-
tal, there was still widespread dissatisfaction with the quality of life.
The results from the first phase of the research show that the lifestyle
of worker families and families of professionals and artists (the representa-
tives of the middle social strata) differ on several dimensions, which I
defined as leisure, cultural consumption and sociability. It was also evident
that there existed a significant match between the children’s lifestyles and
those of their families. This has led me to see family lifestyle as a significant
factor in social differentiation, with its reproduction as the basis for the
social reproduction of a stratum as a whole.8
One of my major conclusions drawn from the first wave of the study is
that children’s childhoods constitute a major aspect of differentiation in the
everyday lives of the families from the two communities. From this general
conclusion, two theoretical hypotheses can be proposed. First, substantially
different patterns of childhood are structured within the lifestyles of families
with different socioeconomic statuses. Second, family lifestyle appears to
mediate social structure and the world of childhood.
Theoretical framework
Several studies point to the significance of lifestyle for the processes of
social differentiation and reproduction in contemporary societies (Bourdieu,
1986; Hendry et al., 1998). The contention that social differentiation has
moved from the sphere of material production to the cultural area of lifestyle
has even more weight for post-socialist societies undergoing turbulent trans-
formations. Recent sociological research on Serbian society has showed that
classical indicators of social status are inadequate for classifying social strata
(Bolčić, 1995; Lazić et al., 1994; Tomanović-Mihajlović, 1997; Vujović,
1994). For example, the middle strata have not disappeared due to poverty,
as many social researchers expected, but have maintained their social status
through other factors. Among these, lifestyle is a key indicator of an indi-
vidual’s or family’s social status. Moreover, as evident from my research,
subtle but significant distinctions in lifestyle are becoming the basis for
342

differentiation within as well as between social strata (Tomanović-

Mihajlović, 1997).
The concept of habitus as a mediator between structure and practices
(Bourdieu, 1990b) provides a valuable tool for analysing relations between
family lifestyle and childhood practices. As a system of ongoing, flexible
dispositions that are integral to everyday practices, ‘the habitus is inculcated
as much, if not more, by experience as by explicit teaching’ (Jenkins, 1992:
76; my emphasis). Bourdieu refers to the process as ‘imperceptible appren-
ticeship’ (Bourdieu, 1973: 82),9 a process that takes place primarily in family
settings and in the education system through processes of social and cultural
reproduction (Bourdieu, 1973; Bourdieu and Passeron, 1990).
While the dispositions that make up habitus are the reflection of struc-
tures, they are at the same time so embodied in the individual that they can
be identified in appearance, speech, behaviour, manners and tastes. Lifestyle
appears as an externalization of family habitus, which in turn presents as the
internalization of family lifestyle.
Family habitus is grounded in different kinds of capital: economic,
cultural, social (Bourdieu, 1990b; Morrow, 1999) while some commentators
include emotional capital (Allatt, 1993). Family habitus also generates and
activates different kinds of capital (Reay, 1998: 28) through the processes of
allocation, distribution and use of family resources.
Families as one of the basic ‘arenas of action’ for the child (Hutchby
and Moran-Ellis, 1998) set the structural and interactional frames for the
everyday practice of childhood. They also provide children with various
resources and ways of using them. Family resources can be differently
defined: as ‘family structure resources’ and ‘family process resources’
(Amato and Ochiltree, 1986), as both ‘material’ and ‘cultural’ (Hutchby and
Moran-Ellis, 1998), including ‘time, space, money, people, social and com-
mercial services’ (Alanen, 1998: 37). Alanen’s operationalization appears to
be the closest to my own. In examining the structuring of children’s every-
day lives, I take into consideration family resources, such as cultural stimuli,
the organization of time, the use of space, social contacts and relationships,
as well as different activities – their availability and quality.
While I have conceptualized family resources in relation to habitus, I
also conceptualize childhood as practice: as the totality of actions and rela-
tions in the everyday life of the child. Childhood practice in everyday life
encompasses spatial and temporal dimensions (Weigert, 1981). It also takes
place in different interactional contexts, between which children negotiate.
Families as organizational contexts

Privatization, institutionalization and the use of space
Typical ways of spending leisure time in the worker families include passive
rest and socializing. The leisure of worker families in the study is private –
343

CHILDHOOD 11(3)
centred around the home and the family. The parents talked about the impact
of the long-lasting social crises (described earlier) on their sociability, con-
fining them to home: ‘There are sudden changes in the society, so people
avoid socializing. Our mentality is like that: when you can’t afford buying
presents when going to visit someone, then people avoid meeting’ (worker,
father of a 6-year-old girl).
Among the families of professionals, leisure time is less standardized.
It is characterized either by individual or family outings and by a greater
number of activities (involving expenditure of material as well as other
resources), such as recreation, visits to cultural institutions (cinemas, the-
atres, concerts and exhibitions), going for walks and picnics and socializing.
The everyday life of worker families is strongly orientated around the
area of Rakovica, where they live and work, and where their friends and rel-
atives live too. As stated in a typical account of one mother: ‘I work here; I
have all the basic things here’. For example: more than two-thirds of parents
said that they seldom leave Rakovica – they go to the city centre only if they
must: ‘We only go to the city centre if we have to – for shopping. It’s like
going to an execution when I go there’ (worker, father of a 7-year old girl).
Furthermore, most of the parents think of Rakovica as a ‘real community’.
Owing to the relative independence of their everyday life from the city,
reflected in the way people feel ‘no need’ for the city facilities, as well as to
a strong, positive identification with the local milieu, a ‘semi-urban way of
life’ has been formed.
The members of workers’ families from Rakovica thus do not use the
advantages of living in a city. This is in contrast with the professionals from
Vračar, for whom living in Belgrade is a way of life and a value in itself.
Limiting everyday life to Rakovica has its effect on the everyday lives
of children. The space of everyday life of the preschool age children from
worker families is centred around home, the immediate surroundings of
neighbourhood and the institutional environment of the kindergarten. For the
school children of Rakovica (interviewed in the second wave of the
research), the everyday spaces they can explore independently or with their
peers include school and suburban housing estates. Only a small number of
school children go to the city centre by themselves and use public transport.
Most of the children in Rakovica show little interest in going to the city cen-
tre on their own, either because they are not attracted to its facilities or they
consider themselves to be ‘too young’ to travel there, while some cannot
obtain their parents’ permission for going so far from home.
The use of space is related to temporal routines and everyday activity
schedules. In the case of Rakovica we cannot speak of segregated spaces for
children; one can rather say that the space for young children is almost
entirely incorporated within the space and everyday life of families. Such a
situation could have both positive and negative effects on children. The posi-
tive side is children’s embeddeness in family life together with the sense of
344

belonging and companionship. On the other hand, considering the extremely

difficult living conditions of worker families, with their cramped and over-
crowded residential space,10 it is not surprising that a lot of negative effects
were reported in the study. They included: anxiety, frequent conflicts within
families, and young children being separated from their families when they
were sent to stay with relatives. The reduced parental control over children’s
everyday life emerges in the context of parents avoiding crowds and giving
children freedom to move around the neighbourhood. Although less control
has some negative effects on children, it may also in some ways be benefi-
cial to them. It may give the child more autonomy in mastering physical and
social space, and provide him or her with more opportunities for developing
social competences through freely interacting with their peers.
The spaces used by the children from middle social strata are broader
with a greater number and variety of everyday activities. However, these
children’s routines are more interrupted. Nevertheless, it may be said, and
especially for young children, that the spaces they occupy are protected,
supervised and to a certain degree segregated into a children’s world situated
within the domestic domain. Almost all the children from the middle-strata
families either have their own room or share a room with their siblings;
some have specially arranged spaces (‘corners’) for play and learning.
Moreover, since their time comprises different organized activities, these
children were directed towards different institutionalized spaces, which are
protected and subject to adult surveillance.
Children’s mobility changes to some extent as they grow up and mas-
ter the physical (and social) space around them. Overall, the children from
my study were very independent in terms of spatial mobility compared with
their peers from London (Mayall, 2001; O’Brien et al., 2000) but less so
when compared to their peers in Finland (Alanen, 1998, 2001). All the chil-
dren go to school and go shopping on their own, they walk and they play
around the neighbourhood with their peers, and go to their friends’ houses;
some of them use public transport and go to distant places such as cinemas,
shopping centres, the city centre. The main difference is that children from
the inner-city middle-strata families go to the city centre and use public
transport more often compared with their peers from worker families, who
limit their spatial mobility to their suburban housing estates and the immedi-
ate surroundings.
Organization of time
The characteristics of time as a dimension of children’s everyday life are sig-
nificantly different in the two groups. The everyday time of children from
middle-strata families in Vračar in both age groups is mainly structured by
their parents. It is less routine, but it involves organized activities either in
institutionalized environments (educational, cultural, sport, etc.) or in non-
formal private or public environments (visits, parties, outings, organized
345

CHILDHOOD 11(3)
socializing and play). Substantially less time is spent in free, self-initiated

and self-organized activities – play and socializing. A negative aspect of the
structuring of children’s time is its ‘over-organization’, which sometimes
results in overburdening the child and in limiting his or her autonomy and
competencies (Qvortrup et al., 1994). It also involves a completely new phe-
nomenon of ‘lack of time’, often noted by the school children as the main
obstacle to taking part in more activities (Buchner, 1990).
In Rakovica, relatively limited space and fewer everyday activities
make time flow in a monotonous way for young children. Although routine
is something that young children like, because it brings feelings of being
secure and protected, the children’s responses reveal that the routine flow of
time also produces a feeling of deprivation. Children highly value events,
such as going out, celebrations, journeys and so forth, which break up the
routines of everyday life. Even just going for a walk could be an event, as
stated by a 6-year-old girl: ‘I like best going for a walk or anywhere, with
Mum or Dad, or my brother’. In other words, monotony is not a problem in
itself providing that it does not limit children’s actions. Since it is much less
organized, everyday time for young children from worker families was less
under their parents’ control.11 On the other hand, it is left to children to con-
struct and create their time, while they have limited resources for initiating
new activities.
The older children from both groups of families have more autonomy
in organizing their time, so that they plan time for playing out and socializ-
ing – the two activities preferred by children.
Generally speaking, at one pole we find overly structured and orga-
nized time, which provides almost too many sensations for the child, but
leaves little space for ‘idle’ play and simple enjoyment, and consequently for
the child’s autonomy. This was especially so when the children in the study
were preschoolers. At the other pole, we find little structured and very little
controlled time, but at the same time few activities. Most of the families
incline towards one pole or the other, while showing variations in the organi-
zation of children’s time.
Family resources: resources for children

Quality, quantity and availability of cultural stimuli
The everyday life of Serbian families in the 1990s was based on enormous
expenditure of human resources (time, energy, emotions), as well as on striv-
ing to develop ‘coping strategies’. It is common among families in this study
to adopt a strategy of ‘deprivation’ (lowering the quantity and quality of
their needs).
The relatively better material position of the middle-strata families was
not, however, in itself a generator of differences in the everyday life of chil-
dren. Most important is their way of allocating and redistributing these sub-
346

stantially limited material resources. The two family strata adopt different
priorities in realizing needs. It has to be noted, nevertheless, that for some
worker families, who have experienced a substantial decline in their material
living standards due to the closure of industrial plants, scarce material
resources limit their efforts to fulfil their children’s wishes. The parents of
two boys from the worker families stated that they could not afford their
sons’ football training, while a couple of girls said that they had to give up
after-school art classes because of not having money. The following account
from the parents of Tamara (12 years; mother a clerk, father an unemployed
industrial worker),12 who does not take part in any activities, shows how they
perceive obstacles for their child’s extracurricular activities:
Interviewer: Would you like her to be engaged in something beyond school?
Father: That’s a good question. Everything you do beyond school costs money.
Sport or any other activity is at least 150 to 200 dinars a month.
Mother: It isn’t like before when I was training – I was given everything: track
shoes, shirt, travelling expenses. Now, you have to do it on your own, you can’t
do it because you have to finance it. I have a friend whose daughter does folk
dancing. They have to pay for the costume, for fees, if they travel somewhere –
one has to pay for everything: lunch, transport. In the end, it is more than our
salaries. And Tamara might want to go to a dancing club and fashion model
course.
There are significant social stratum differences in the possession,

availability and ways of using family resources that fall into the category of
so-called cultural stimuli. The possession and reading of books, by adults as
well as by children, is significantly more common in middle-strata families.13
The limited use of cultural resources offered by institutions of culture (cine-
mas, theatres, concerts, exhibitions), which is an enduring cultural pattern
among worker families, is additionally stressed by contextual factors. On the
one hand, material deprivation combined with exhaustion and anxiety, limits
leisure and confines it to the home and family members. On the other hand,
fewer cultural resources are available to worker families. The consequence is
an ‘inequality of cultural communication’ (Nemanjić, 1988), so that even if
worker families want to use cultural content, it requires a considerable
expenditure of resources (time, energy, etc.), for which there exists little
expressed need or motivation among this group.
This situation affects children’s cultural consumption. Those preschool
children who are not attending kindergarten have no contact with children’s
theatre (over half of young children from families of workers have never vis-
ited): ‘I would like to go, but since my daddy and mommy don’t have
enough money, then I can’t’ (Ivan, then 6); ‘I don’t like to go, because I’ve
never been there. That’s why I wouldn’t like to go’ (Luka, then 6). Both of
these accounts suggest children are competent social actors: Ivan mentions
the lack of family resources while Luka dismisses the idea of even wanting
to go to the theatre.
347

CHILDHOOD 11(3)
The privatization of lifestyles within the boundaries of the home

means that the cultural taste of parents and children in the worker families
are shaped by mass populist culture via television (especially soap operas),
radio (neo-folk music)14 and videos. As is the case of their parents, preschool
age children from worker families preferred popular programmes on televi-
sion and neo-folk music. By contrast, the cultural tastes of professionals and
artists in the study are more diverse and shaped by personal preferences with
respect to: a variety of television stations, programmes, radio stations, news-
papers (read regularly), books, films (dramas, thrillers) and various kinds of
music (classical, pop, rock, old folk music).
As mentioned earlier, the leisure of the professional families is far less
standardized; it includes outings and different activities such as going to cin-
emas, theatres, concerts and exhibitions, walks and picnics, and socializing.
It is oriented towards the public sphere and institutions. As stated earlier,
professionals consider living in Belgrade a benefit in itself and try to make
the most of it. A ‘cultural lifestyle’ (so-called ‘high culture’) is a dominant
characteristic of city life (Nemanjić, 1988: 25). In contrast, the cultural tastes
of worker families is marked by the consumption of ‘neo-folk’ culture,
which is at the same time the condition and the consequence of the ‘lack of
urbanity’ and the ‘provincial mentality’ of suburban and ‘semi-urban’ envi-
ronments (Vujović, 1995: 113).
The leisure of preschool children from professional and artist families
was made up of different activities: social, educational (music playgroup,
foreign language), sports and cultural. These children go to institutions of
culture – cinemas, theatres, exhibitions, etc. All the young children from the
middle strata had visited children’s theatres and over one-third went often.
As well as being locally available in the city centre, their consumption
results from their parents’ efforts. Their cultural tastes were not formed by
‘neo-folk culture’, but by cultural activities designed for children: special
theatre and cinema shows, children’s television and videos, children’s music.
The distinctions in cultural tastes among children from different social
strata persist as children grow up, as was evident in the second wave of the
research. Although there are some similarities stemming from the popularity
of teenage culture, children from worker families still preferred popular
‘neo-folk’ culture. They tended not to read as much as their peers from the
middle strata. Some of the children from professional and artist families
expressed an interest in theatre and classical music (listening and playing) as
well as in reading different kinds of books.
Children’s activities as a form of cultural capital

Time and space in everyday life delineate children’s activities. None of 72
preschool children in Rakovica were engaged in any organized activities and
many left kindergarten because their mothers were temporarily out of work,
due to ‘enforced paid leave’. This meant that their everyday life, as
348

expressed in both children’s and parents’ accounts, comprised basic activi-

ties (feeding, sleeping, taking care of oneself), playing, socializing with
peers and with family members.
Children welcomed every step out of the daily routine – symbolic or
actual. Play is a symbolic reshaping of the mundane, and thereby has great
significance for children of preschool age (Damon, 1983). Children them-
selves prioritized play as their favourite everyday activity. Outings, visits,
walks, journeys, were celebratory events which they remembered for a long
time and which they longed to repeat. In the account by Ivan (then 6; father
a railway worker; mother a clerk), one can see that a simple event such as a
picnic remained impressed on his mind for a long time:
I like best going to Swan’s Hill, you can fish there. When daddy goes with his
pals, they have fishing rods . . . I was there once before. They had fishing rods
and worms. And they gave me a fishing rod too, so I could catch a fish. And I
caught some. Just a small one. It was a long time ago . . .
Everyday life for young children in the middle-strata families was

comprised of various activities, which included attending music lessons or
ballet, learning a foreign language, going to the cinema and theatre, taking
part in plays at the children’s theatre, playing sports (swimming, tennis, skat-
ing). Here is a typical parental account of a child’s everyday schedule:
He usually gets up at 7.30 or 8. After washing up he has breakfast, and then
Grandpa or I take him to the French playgroup. He stays there till 12.30 a.m.,
when Grandpa or I take him home. He has lunch with his brother and then they
play for a while. Sometimes they draw or, when they are restless we play a film
on the video. Twice a week he goes to gymnastics training and once to music
playgroup. In the evening, they just have dinner and go to sleep – they are
exhausted. (Woman piano teacher, husband economist, two sons – 5 and 3)
The same mother speaks of her son’s weekly agenda (he is now 11):
When he goes to school in the morning, then Monday is a bit difficult because
he has music school and folk dance in school on the same day, music in the
afternoon and folk dance in the evening. But he is thrilled with that. He started
folk dance just before the war [referring to NATO bombardment] and he likes it
a lot. The rest of the days he has only one activity: art class on Tuesday that he
doesn’t have to go, Wednesday night – folk dance, Thursday – music school,
Friday is free, and drawing on Saturday. Each day something, but a maximum
of an hour and a half.
When questioned in the survey, 83 percent of all the school children

had reported having one or more regular organized activities after school
every week (47% – one activity, 25% – two, 11% – three and 1% four regu-
lar activities). The children spend a considerable amount of time on these
activities: 15 percent spend 4 hours and 34 percent 6 hours a week. Sports
training is the most popular single activity (30%) or combined with one or
two other activities (24%), followed by foreign language lessons and singing
in the school choir.
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CHILDHOOD 11(3)
Out of the 21 case study children from both strata, four had no after-
school activities, five did sports training (football and basketball), while oth-
ers engaged in different activities. Among the 10 children from middle-strata
families, six attended music school (playing instruments), one drama classes,
one Latino dance classes, one basketball. Only one child did no activities.
Five did more than one regular activity a week. Out of the 11 children from
the worker families, three did sports training (football and basketball), two
were in the scouts, two sang in the school choir, one was having English
lessons, while three were not engaged in any after-school activities. Sport is
such a popular and desirable activity among children that peers sometimes
pressure a child to conform:
I would like to do sport and basketball, but less than I like culture. In my school
class everyone is for sport and they are all training in basketball, and they some-
times look at me like – he doesn’t do sport. Only a couple of my friends under-
stand that I prefer culture more and they find it nice that I prefer culture.
(Dusan, 11; mother piano teacher, father economist)
Parents have different reasons for encouraging children to take up

after-school activities. Activities are institutionalized: they are time sched-
uled and take place in segregated spaces with other children who are known
to parents. They are hence an important means of social control; by taking
part in different organized activities children are kept ‘busy’ and ‘away from
the streets’:
Mother: I would like her to get involved in anything, so she would have an
obligation besides school. Sport or something, so she would have as less space
as possible for silly things. Kids are very exposed to influences. I wouldn’t like
her being dragged into bad company. (Mother of Maja –13; a worker family)
Father: It is a way to isolate her from all this, a small oasis in ugly surround-
ings. Considering that circumstances are not like they used to be, that children
grow up in a normal environment, it is extremely important to find something
like that to spend their time on. It is important that they spend time in a world
very different from that on the streets, so they can be kept away from negative
influences. (Father of two girls: Irena – 11 and her sister – 16, a professional
family)
The rationale of parents from the middle strata for their children’s
engagement in after-school activities reveals how positive use is made of liv-
ing in the inner city:
I think it is important, especially here in the city where all these programmes
are. They should be offered a try at everything, to find [what they like] them-
selves. The time we live in simply demands that, simply all children go to some
activities. But one shouldn’t overdo it. (Dusan’s mother, piano teacher)
The second account reveals parents’ tendency to make distinctions

between education and schooling and their effort to compensate for failings
in the formal education system, which they perceive to be seriously devalued
in Serbian society:15
350

Because school can’t provide any real education, apart from literacy. It would
be ideal that he speaks two languages in school. I consider music to be impor-
tant too, it is not relevant whether he will be in music or not, but it is important
to become a musically educated person who can enjoy music. I consider that
very important. I wish he could already speak at least one foreign language and
that he had travelled. And of course, I would like him to keep studying music –
to finish the second level of music school, and then he will decide himself.
(Sava’s [11] mother, artist/painter; father, opera director)
Through children’s everyday actions and regular activities, everyday

life is extended beyond the home and its surroundings, while the monoto-
nous flow of time is broken. On the other hand, some parents mentioned the
negative effects of the child being engaged in so many activities: ‘She usual-
ly goes out with us in the afternoon: to walk, theatre, exhibition, birthday
party, visit, etc. It is all diverse, full of events. Sometimes it is too much for
her’ (woman actor, husband painter, one daughter – 6). According to some
parents’ accounts, there were times when the young child became so
exhausted and overwhelmed by being subjected to so much stimulation dur-
ing a day that he or she could not sleep.
Parents of some school children in the study are aware that so many
activities together with school demands are sometimes too much for their
children. This is how Sava’s parents comment on his everyday life:
Interviewer: What is his average day like?
Father: Terrifying.
Mother: Well, hard. He goes to school and then I force him to rehearse the
cello. After that he goes to music school, three times a week. Then his tutor
comes and he spends some 3–4 hours with her, already exhausted. They need so
much because he doesn’t know how to use time, his concentration is low and he
doesn’t know how to finish the work fast but drags it on for hours.
While Sava himself says:

Sometimes I don’t get enough sleep, I am tired. But every day when I am tired,
I say I’ll go to bed earlier, but when evening comes it is more interesting to stay
awake. Then in the morning I say again why didn’t I go to bed earlier.
Children’s social networks

Social networks in early childhood primarily consist of family members,
peers from children’s immediate surroundings – persons with whom the par-
ents maintain everyday contact. For school children, new social networks are
provided via the social space of schools and related peer groups. Their social
networks focus on basic everyday activities and social spaces. An increase in
the number and kind of daily activities widens their social spaces and
increases the complexity of social networks.
The significant actors for young children in worker families were
members of their households, neighbours and relatives. A significant number
of young children lived in multigenerational households, which offer chil-
dren a range of additional significant others who can substitute for busy
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CHILDHOOD 11(3)
overburdened parents. Grandmothers, less frequently grandfathers, typically

play a key role in the child’s everyday life (Brannen et al., 2000). There is no
doubt about the significance of these relations for a child’s well-being, but
they were sometimes overprotective, leading to an ‘infantilization’ of the
children (Tomanović-Mihajlović, 2000).16
The children from the middle-strata families interact through their var-
ious everyday activities with a greater number of people – both adults and
peers. Through these interactions social networks that are mutually intercon-
nected are formed. The children who go to kindergarten often meet their
friends (and friends’ parents) in other activities outside – for example at
birthday parties or the children’s theatre. Sometimes the children initiated
the networks, while sometimes the adults did so. The active role of children
in forming social networks is referred to by some mothers: ‘We mothers of
four or five children who sing in the children’s theatre choir get together and
we organize parties for the children and us. So, by leading the social life of
the child, I socialize myself’ (woman doctor, daughter, Ivana, 6). From the
interview with the same mother (Ivana now 12), it can be seen that these
social relationships have lasted:
It is like five, six or seven families that we keep in contact with, they are not rel-
atives. I took care during all these years that Ivana should not be deprived in
that area, it means that our socializing was related to people with children of her
age. If it is New Year, I don’t enjoy going somewhere without her, so we invite
people with children. So we have started friendships with some great people
thanks to her. There are people we have met in The Snail [children’s theatre]
and we have been friends for six years now.
For some parents from the middle strata, children’s activities constitute
a form of social capital, which provides them with valued social contacts.
Sava’s father refers to a strategy of reducing risks in the child’s everyday life
and at the same time creating social networks:
First we try to involve the child and make him close to the circle of people that
are familiar to us, that’s one of the methods. We make those visits during week-
ends and we go on holidays together so he can play with certain children from
our social milieu. On the other hand, at certain times, we send him somewhere
with particular groups, where there is also a circle of children from a similar
cultural stratum. Then, I am counting on this, at the moment he starts high
school, there will be certain schools with distinctive groups of children [he’ll
associate with]. (Opera director, father of a boy, 11, and a girl, 3)
Although this means that these children’s time is highly structured and
fragmented, children’s relationships were not fragmented or superficial
(Buchner, 1990). All the children made efforts to develop and maintain
friendships mostly with the children from the same area, which they valued.
New relationships are added as the child expands his or her social network
through school and new activities.
352

Investing in children
From the interview accounts of the parents of the older children, it can be
seen that they have significantly different aspirations for their children with
respect to education and the acquisition of culture.
Parents from the families of workers draw upon a pragmatic logic in
which education (schooling) plays an instrumental role:
We’ll see to get him into a school that is not overly academic, and that he has
more money. Why to pretend to be clever, why fool anyone. I’ll insist: why
should he work for little money, when he can go where the money is and grab it.
Why study like a fool, like I did; I could have gone to that school for customs
officers or on a course, then I’d be getting a couple of bottles of whiskey, a cou-
ple of packs of ‘Marlboro’ [refers to bribes]. (Milan’s father, unemployed man-
ual worker working nights as a bouncer).
Milan (now 14) himself thinks that his talent for football may lead to a foot-
ball career.
Other parents from workers’ families go along with the idea that chil-
dren should get a vocational training so that they can earn ‘their own bread’
and become financially secure. These parents are investing their capital, eco-
nomic as well as social, in providing the material foundations for their chil-
dren to start independent businesses in the future (hairdressing salons, gro-
cery shops, mechanic repair shops, etc.). There is a small number of the
worker families who employ their resources (especially ‘emotional capital’
from the mother’s side17) in providing their children with a more educational
‘environment’, both through activities and their insistence on school
achievement. The only child among children from worker families who is
studying a foreign language comes from this latter group of families.
Parents from the middle strata, although conscious of the devaluation
of education in current Serbian society, still insist on providing their children
with a broad education and culture:
We should give him a perspective, because we hope it is not going to be like
this forever: provide him with a profession and education and pray that it makes
sense one day. (Sava’s mother, painter)
Most of these middle-strata parents have less defined ideas about their
child’s future: they want their children to be ‘educated people’ with broad
horizons, and at the same time content with their life: ‘He doesn’t have to be
a celebrity, but to do a job that he likes. And to be materially secure, and sat-
isfied – so that he doesn’t have to do things that contradict his nature in
order to survive’, says Dusan’s mother. As children suggest in other studies
(Mayall, 2001), Dusan has a more open vision of the future: ‘I would like to
be an artist, freelancer, not teach in school. Or be a basketball player, or a
regular theatre and concert goer, to be close to culture’, which somewhat
echoed his mother’s views. There are children who are more determined:
Irena (11) has been acting in children’s theatre since she was 4; at the
moment she attends drama classes and wants acting to be her profession.
353

CHILDHOOD 11(3)
The children from worker families, like their parents, have more prag-
matic aspirations for their future:
I did modelling for 3 months, but I quit because they asked for too much
money. We learned walking, turning around, how to get hats and scarves off. If
I had finished that, I could do that for living. I wanted to be a photographic
model. I would like to do that in my life. (Maja, 13, parents are unemployed
workers and started a small grocery shop)
Slavica (14) is encouraged by her parents (mother a clerk; father an

industrial worker) to go to vocational school for beauticians, so that she can
start a business with her elder sister who is taking a course in hair-dressing.
Concluding discussion
From a synthesis of the conceptual dimensions I have used and applied in
the study, I have constructed a model or a matrix for understanding and
interpreting the relation between family habitus and children’s everyday life
(see Figure 1).
The research findings show that children’s everyday lives are shaped
directly by family habitus and lifestyle as it is externalized in the use of
space, the organization of time and cultural tastes. Under conditions where
family lifestyle becomes privatized – home centred and family oriented –
then children’s everyday lives are oriented to a greater extent towards fami-
ly, the home and the neighbourhood, with routine everyday schedules and
social networks comprising family members, relatives, peers drawn from the
neighbourhood and from school. This is the case of the children in the work-
er families. When family lifestyle is more oriented towards public and insti-
tutional spaces, then children’s everyday life is also oriented towards those
spaces while their time is more organized and their social networks more
diversified. This is the case of children in the families of professionals and
artists.
The research findings from both phases of the study show that the cul-
tural tastes of children are reflections of their families’ lifestyles, including
cultural consumption and preferences. There are some individual variations.
The influence of popular teenage culture is also evident among the sample of
older children. However, in their cultural preferences, the children are still
very much under the influence of their family habitus.
The number and variety of everyday activities was critical in defining
children’s space and time, as well as the actors in children’s everyday life.
By making children’s everyday life more complex, in its spatial, temporal
and interactional dimensions, pursuing a variety of everyday activities pro-
vides children with different sensations, experiences and contacts, as well as
more opportunities for making choices.18 Since the everyday life of children
is strongly related to family habitus, it becomes the primary source of con-
straints and opportunities for them. Lifestyle sets the boundaries for the child
354

Family habitus Family Everyday life

(lifestyle) resources children
the way of spending material space

leisure time resources
cultural consumption cultural stimuli time
sociability space actors
ethos time activities
actors strategic actor

(identity)
activities
Figure 1 The relation between family habitus and children’s everyday life
as a strategic actor (James and Prout, 1996: 47). The understanding of child-
hood as an inherent part of family habitus defines the status and role of the
child within the structural context of the family, and determines his or her
agency. Depending upon the family’s ‘cultural level’ (Willis, 1983), child-
hood shapes the priorities in the everyday life of families concerning chil-
dren, as well as how families value and use resources. Ideas about investing
in children’s development and their future by providing them with early edu-
cation and ‘culture’ distinguish between the two kinds of child-centred fami-
lies in my study (Zelizer, 1985).
There are significant differences in material resources, within and
between the social strata represented by the study families. For some fami-
lies, very limited material resources constrain their efforts to fulfil their
child’s wishes. For other families, their family habitus shapes priorities for
using material resources and goals for activating economic capital.
When the children reach school age, I have also suggested that parents
have a different understanding of the notion of investing in children and dif-
ferent practices stemming from those notions. The families of workers are
oriented towards investing their economic capital (savings, inheritance) as
well their social capital (social networks) into providing their children with
material security (a secure job or a small business). For that purpose they
consider formal (vocational) schooling to be important, as it provides skills
355

CHILDHOOD 11(3)
and qualifications necessary for their children’s future employment. After-

school activities are not seen as important; they are considered by the major-
ity of parents from the worker families more as a means of control over chil-
dren’s free time (‘to keep them busy’) than as education and an opportunity
for the acquisition of culture.
In contrast, it is evident from the research that parents from the mid-
dle-strata families put substantial resources (material as well as human) into
continual investment in their children’s cultural capital through various
activities. Besides being considered capital in itself, these activities play an
important part in compensating for the devaluation of the educational sys-
tem. They also provide the children with social contacts valued by their par-
ents as social capital.
The significance of family habitus lies in the fact that children do not
internalize the everyday world as one of many possible worlds, but as the
only possible one, at least in the early part of childhood (Berger and
Luckmann, 1967). Identity is formed differently depending on availability of
acquaintance with the different as well as the opportunity to make choices,
which are provided by family lifestyle. As children grow up and their every-
day lives become more diversified and relatively less dependent on family
life, the differences are less clear-cut. However, the key point remains: fami-
ly habitus is a key influence on defining everyday life for the child by pro-
viding him or her with different amounts and different kinds of cultural and
social capital (Morrow, 1999: 761).
The main conclusion can be summarized thus: family habitus defines
the allocation, distribution and the use of family resources and thereby struc-
tures the everyday life of children. At the same time, family habitus activates
different kinds of capital for (and by) children and thereby constructs differ-
ent childhood practices (see Figure 2).
Different opportunities for making choices shape the structural,
ideational and practical contexts of childhood. As my study shows, the dis-
tinction is so strong that we can speak of two worlds of childhood in the
Family habitus + resources = capitals
Children’s everyday life
Childhood practices
Figure 2 The relation between family habitus and children’s practices
356

populations studied. Opportunities for making choices and contact with oth-
ers are a form of cultural capital. While it may seem paradoxical, opportuni-
ties for making choices open up the channels for individualization and pro-
vide exits from the magic circle of social reproduction (Jones and Wallace,
1990).19
Notes
The article reports on some of the results of the research project that was financially supported
by Research Support Scheme, Grant No. 398–1999, of the Open Society Institute. I would like
to express my special gratitude to Professor Julia Brannen from the Institute of Education,
University of London for many inspiring discussions and for her generous effort on editing the
draft of the article. My thanks go to Professor Berry Mayall, from the Institute of Education,
University of London, to Professor Rosalind Edwards from South Bank University, London
and to Virginia Morrow from the London School of Economics, for their valuable comments
on earlier versions of this article. I am also very much in debt to my professor Andjelka Milić
from Belgrade University for her continuous and generous support of my work for many years.
1. Although I am fully aware of the crucial place of children’s agency both as a concept
and as a practice, the scope of the article made me decide to adopt the structural approach.
Since there is a lot of empirical material on both perspectives in my study, the children’s
agency is the focus of another article.
2. My use of the concept of ‘practice’ partly coincides with Morgan’s more wide and
diversified notion of ‘family practices’ (Morgan, 1996).
3. Rakovica is an industrial and residential area located in the suburbs of Belgrade, but
not far from the city centre (15–20 km). It has been chosen for the research as a working-class
community where people work and reside in the same locality. Vraćar is an inner-city area of
Belgrade, considered by its inhabitants to have a community identity.
4. Primary school in Serbia starts from the age of 7 and is mandatory. It is divided into
two levels (four forms each): lower and higher. The children from the second wave of the
study, thus, attend ‘higher forms of primary school’.
5. Originally, there were 24 children chosen for the longitudinal study: 12 for each sub-
sample, but the families of two girls had emigrated, while parents of one girl avoided being
interviewed again (which means that girls are underrepresented in the sample). Because of the
longitudinal nature of the project – that it follows the same children of a generation, these
absent families could not be substituted by others.
6. Three fathers avoided the interview with the excuse of being too busy. Two children
were from divorced families; however they did not live in single-parent families but in extend-
ed households. Nine of the study children lived in extended households (three-generational),
while the others lived in nuclear families. Fifteen families had two children, three had three,
and three had one child.
7. The ‘coping strategies’ that families in Serbia used were various: illegal work and
trade, smuggling, selling household belongings, making food and clothes for use at home or
for sale, growing plants and breeding animals in household plots, receiving help from relatives
(from within the country and from abroad), receiving help in goods from trade unions, etc. The
most prominent strategy was and still is ‘deprivation’ – a lowering of the quantity and quality
of the realization of needs.
8. My research points to ‘forces’ of social reproduction still being more powerful than
‘forces’ of individualization (Jones and Wallace, 1990).
9. Bernstein (1975) developed the concept of ‘invisible pedagogy’.
10. In 1993, over two-thirds (77%) of respondents from worker families studied by
357

CHILDHOOD 11(3)
standardized interviews lived in residential spaces below the pathological threshold of 13 m2

per household member. Since 62 percent of respondents lived in extended families with five
(27%), six (26%), seven (5%) and eight and more (7%) members, while the flats mostly had
one or two rooms (89%), it is not surprising that the space for a family member sometimes
went down to 3 m2.
11. One should, nevertheless, be cautious in making conclusions about children’s
autonomous spending of time and their well-being. The knowledge on a child’s experience of
time spent on his or her own is still too scarce to come to a conclusion about either the positive
or negative effects (James et al., 1998: 78).
12. The children’s names are pseudonyms in order to preserve their anonymity.
13. For example: the school psychologist from Rakovica found in her research that one-
third of first form primary school children never had a book in their hands before coming to
school.
14. So-called ‘neo-folk’ or ‘turbo folk’ music is a unique phenomenon originating from
Serbia, but spreading in popularity around the Balkans. It is a particular kind of popular music
based on contemporary variations of oriental melodies, which has nothing to do with tradition-
al folklore. There is a whole highly popular kitsch culture stemming from ‘neo-folk’ music
launched and broadcast by numerous specialized television and radio stations. Some authors
talk about a way of life emerging from the ‘neo-folk’ culture (Šešić–Dragićević, 1994), while
some ascribe social and political connotations and functions to it (Gordy, 1999).
15. The discussion on relations between family and school, parents’ and children’s percep-
tion of education, etc. (‘hot issues’ in my research), would require a whole new study.
16. As mentioned earlier, nine of the 21 children in the case studies live in multigenera-
tional households. Beside the accounts on the significance of grandparents in an emotional
sense, there is also a couple of accounts, from both parents and children, on grandparents tak-
ing part in the ‘transmission’ of cultural capital in the middle-strata families: taking children to
different places, reading and talking to them about various things, teaching them to play instru-
ments, etc.
17. It is important to note here that I do not consider families and parenthood as ‘gender-
less’. There is a noticeable difference in mothers’ and fathers’ involvement in children’s lives
and education. The difference is not as substantial as in other countries, which is apparent,
among other things, by the number of fathers who volunteered for interviews. Gendered dis-
tinctions in parenting are mostly related to type of family relations, in terms of partnership,
reciprocity, companionship, etc. Although I acknowledge those distinctions, it is a problem
beyond the scope of this article.
18. Whether it is a matter of the child’s autonomous choice based on his or her judgement
and decision is an open question that would lead to discussion on relativity of freedom of
choice.
19. Individualization of childhood is itself an ambiguous phenomenon: on one hand auton-
omy and independence are insisted on, while on the other hand the everyday life of the child
takes place in highly institutionalized contexts.
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Family Habitus As The Cultural Context For Childhood

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Childhood

Family Habitus as the Cultural Context for Childhood

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SMILJKA TOMANOVIĆ The article is based on a longitudinal qualitative

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of the methodology and the major findings of my study, followed by a brief

Table 1 Description of the two waves of the study

Time Subjects Method Site and number of cases

1993–4 Families with Standardized Industrial area 100a Inner city 32

2000 Families with Case studies Industrial area 11 Inner city 10

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strategies’.7 The ‘brutalization’ of everyday life, in terms of the struggle to

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differentiation within as well as between social strata (Tomanović-

Families as organizational contexts

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belonging and companionship. On the other hand, considering the extremely

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socializing and play). Substantially less time is spent in free, self-initiated

Family resources: resources for children

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There are significant social stratum differences in the possession,

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The privatization of lifestyles within the boundaries of the home

Children’s activities as a form of cultural capital

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expressed in both children’s and parents’ accounts, comprised basic activi-

Everyday life for young children in the middle-strata families was

When questioned in the survey, 83 percent of all the school children

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Parents have different reasons for encouraging children to take up

The second account reveals parents’ tendency to make distinctions

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Through children’s everyday actions and regular activities, everyday

While Sava himself says:

Children’s social networks

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overburdened parents. Grandmothers, less frequently grandfathers, typically

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Slavica (14) is encouraged by her parents (mother a clerk; father an

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Family habitus Family Everyday life

the way of spending material space

cultural consumption cultural stimuli time

sociability space actors

ethos time activities

actors strategic actor

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and qualifications necessary for their children’s future employment. After-

Family habitus + resources = capitals

Children’s everyday life

Figure 2 The relation between family habitus and children’s practices

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standardized interviews lived in residential spaces below the pathological threshold of 13 m2

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